cem said:
Of course it has been on the Preliminary syllabus for a number of years - my school was teaching it in 1994 as it was on the syllabus implemented that year. As I wasn't teaching the syllabus before that year (only teaching modern) I don't know if Pompeii was on the two year syllabus but I suspect not.
When they first talked about a core for Ancient History (in the late 1990s) there were a number of suggestions put forward - Pompeii, Alexandria (which may very well replace it in the next syllabus or two), Bronze Age Greece and even pre-1788 Australia (that one got virtually no support from Ancient History teachers.).
A did a tour of Pompeii and Herculaneum with Brian Brennan and Estelle Lazer (and Jenny Lawless and Kate Cameron) last September/October holidays and there were quite a few teachers on that tour who were doing the tour because they had to teach Pompeii this year and had no knowledge about the topic having never studied or taught it.
Yeah, you've told me about the tour before.
That being said, when I talked to Jen Lawless and Gae, they said that they were happy with how Pompeii is turning out.
Alexandria would be too much to study - I don't think it would be easy to teach about a city that has been inhabited from prehistory up til now. Of course they'd make a date-bracket (say 333BC-600AD for the 'Classical' era), but, as they've found with Augustus and the Julio-Claudians, date-brackets rarely work out.
Alexandria is such a complex example of how the Egyptians just wouldn't give when it came to their identity. It was only 600 years after the 'founding' of Alexandria when the city finally gave up Egyptian paganism - and most people would argue that Egyptian theology has never been abandoned in the weird traditions of the Copts.
Pompeii is the best choice, but it's just my opinion.